Judy Munri-Leighton admitted to lying, and Julie Swetnick's story collapsed.

It's now incontrovertible that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the victim of at least one—and probably two—false allegations of sexual assault.

The latest evidence comes from Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa), who has asked the Justice Department to investigate Judy Munri-Leighton, a left-leaning activist from Kentucky, for allegedly making false statements. According to Grassley, Munri-Leighton initially claimed in an email to the committee that Kavanaugh had raped her, and he was questioned on this point during the September 26 hearing regarding allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford and others.

Subsequently, Munri-Leighton recanted her charge and admitted she had never met Kavanaugh. "I was angry, and I sent it out," she said.

Munri-Leighton's confession means this accusation should be definitively labeled false.

Another accusation, made by Julie Swetnick and attorney Michael Avenatti, should be regarded as highly suspect, at the very least, given that the accuser has contradicted her story. (Both Swetnick and Avenatti were referred for investigation as well.) Avenatti supplied NBC News with a witness who supposedly could corroborate Swetnick's account; instead, the woman confessed she felt Avenatti had "twisted" her words. NBC felt cheated; Chuck Todd accused Avenatti of purposefully misleading reporters.

We can't say for certain whether Ford's accusation against Kavanaugh was true, false, or somewhere in-between. But it's simply a fact that several subsequent allegations of sexual abuse have, to varying degrees, collapsed.

This has not deterred some activist groups. "We still believe Julie Swetnick," tweeted Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

The ludicrousness of the progressive slogan that all self-described victims should be believed is on full display. It does survivors of sexual assault no good to take charlatans seriously or to pretend that liars don't exist. When pressure groups or the press claim otherwise, they only undermine their credibility, ensuring that the public will be more inclined to doubt future victims whose stories are embraced by these institutions. As The Washington Post's Megan McArdle writes:

It would, of course, be much simpler if women never lied about rape. Their stories wouldn't need to be interrogated, no sifting and sorting of the facts in a crime that is notoriously hard to prosecute.

But we know that's not possible. High-profile false rape accusations such as the ones in the Rolling Stone article reflect the reality that between 2 and 10 percent of rape allegations are provably false; the FBI says 8 percent of forcible-rape allegations are "unfounded." The number of false accusations that can't be proved false necessarily pushes that number even higher. To act as if this weren't the case borders on wishful thinking, and it comes at a cost.

NBC wasn't the only media outlet that seems to have relaxed its normal standards during the Kavanaugh hearings. The New Yorker, with exceptionally weak evidence, ran allegations of his sexual misbehavior in college. The reporters no doubt believed they were making it easier for victims to be heard. But airing insufficiently vetted allegations encourages the public to distrust the media. Actual victims won't be heard if no one's listening.

The Kavanaugh fiasco should serve as a strong reminder that the press must cautiously vet accusations, and that legal systems should operate in accordance with principles of fairness and a respect for due process.

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Mad casual states it. She claimed it was the rape that caused the second door. The problem is the second door was on a unit they rented first to a previous psychologist as her place of business, when the door was put in, then used the room as a rental to silicon valley people. It was never used as a second exit for the primary residents, ie her.

A shorter article by Robby would have been “I was willing to suspend common sense about an insane gang rape ring that had no corroborating witnesses, was disputed by the alleged witnesses identified by the accuser, and which was being pushed by a noted Democratic Party grifter, Michael Avanetti, because above all else anyone who threatens our current abortion regime should not be afforded the benefit of the doubt.”

That would be more honest then pretending as if you actually care about “innocent before proven guilty” once you’ve been exposed as a hack

NBC wasn’t the only media outlet that seems to have relaxed its normal standards during the Kavanaugh hearings. The New Yorker, with exceptionally weak evidence, ran allegations of his sexual misbehavior in college.

Like a president suspending habeas corpus in extraordinary circumstances for the good of the union, often times the Fourth Estate must temporarily free itself of the shackles of journalistic rigor in order to make sure women’s health isn’t tossed aside like an empty keg.

It depends. To be sure, Robby reported it objectively. Several members of the commentariate ripped it to shreds on first reading. Robby and Sabrina got into a twitter fight and that’s when Robby really turned the corner.

It’s difficult to imagine a more callous, wholly inadequate response to a culture of seemingly rampant sexual assault at the University of Virginia (UVA) than the one its administrators practiced year after year, according to a horrifying account finally publicized by Rolling Stone last week. But that’s precisely what happens when an entity equipped only to deal with academic misbehavior is instead pushed to do something about sexual assault: it finds itself putting the university’s brand name first and the victims second.

That was Robby’s first take on the story. He believed it hook line and sinker despite it being patently absurd from the start.

“Weren’t you on here posting about how the mail bombs were a false flag operation by some Democrat, John?”

Could have been me. I couldn’t fathom how a conservative could be dumb enough to put a timer on a mail bomb instead of a trigger unless they were trying to scare and not injure, what conservative in their right mind would actually want the gift that never stops giving known as Maxine Waters dead, that a conservative could be dumb you enough to think a pipe shaped object in prepaid bag type usps envelope could make it passed screening to an expresident, and that a conservative could be so inept as to build 9 bombs that didn’t go off.

It was an amazingly incompetent attempt, and that plus the thousands of progressive criminal hoaxes in the past decade meant it smelled fishy to some reasonable people.

Good for him. But that doesn’t make his initial belief of the story any more defensible and it isn’t the same thing as “poking holes in the story” as iis claimed. Robby never did shit except believe it and let other people do the work of debunking it.

Why don’t run along and stop wasting everyone’s time telling us how dreamy Robby is.

I would like to think that I am relatively free of these biases. I have no particular axe to grind with fraternities, although I do think they play a regrettable and occasionally dangerous role as alcohol distributors to the under-21 crowd, courtesy of the federal drinking age. And I don’t believe sexual assault is as grave a problem at college campuses as many activists have made it out to be?if the 1-in-4 statistic were anywhere close to accurate, it would be a baffling outlier in a sea of falling rape rates.

So when I say that I was initially inclined to believe the story, it’s not because I wanted or needed it to be true to fit my worldview. Rather, I assumed honesty on the part of the author and her source?not because I’m naive, but because I didn’t think someone would lie about such an unbelievable story. This isn’t a case of he-said / she-said; this is an extraordinary crime that indicts a dozen people and an entire university administration. Assuming a proper investigation?which the police are now conducting?confirming many of the specific details should be relatively easy. If “Jackie” is lying, there is a good chance she will be caught (and Erdely’s career ruined). So I believed it.

Here he finally admits the story is false based on a Washington Post story. Soave never poked holes in anything. He initially believed the story and then after other people revealed it to be false, changed his mind.

We can’t say for certain whether Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh was true, false, or somewhere in-between.

Then fairness dictates that you treat them as if they didn’t happen. To do otherwise would be to say that someone is guilty and should be treated as such whenever they are accused of something and unable to completely disprove it.

Well, not quite. Fairness requires that you note that while we can’t say for certain whether her accusations were true or false, we can say that she utterly failed to substantiate them, and that since the burden of proof is on the accuser, journalistic standards of corroboration require maintaining the accused’s presumption of innocence.

Shorter: if Robby was a real journalist, he would say that the accused should be presumed innocent unless corroborating evidence for her allegations turns up later on.

The fact that Robby was cheerleading these accusations at the time, including the one made by Swetnick, puts him in the same group as the people he refers to as “not doing journalistic due process.” If they weren’t doing due diligence, and Robby parroted their talking points, Robby similarly wasn’t doing his due diligence. That makes this whole article, with Robby’s attempt at grandstanding in favor of due process, ring REALLY hollow.

The real threat is not “believe all women”. Only crazy feminsts take that seriously. The real threat is the idea that there being multiple allegations of something makes it certain the guy is guilty. Lots of people, including Robby, buy into that one. And it is just saying that if a lie is repeated by enough people it must be true.

By Robby’s own standard I hereby accuse him of having molested me forty years ago when I was a young boy. I don’t remember much about it, have no witnesses to back me up, and no physical evidence, but unless he can come,Evelyn disprove it he is guilty and therefore I demand he lose his job with Reason.

Since I’ve already accused him of being a toddler rapist, and you’ve now accused him of molesting you, Robby has multiple allegations against him, is therefore a credibly accused child molester, and must therefore be immediately fired.

This has not deterred some activist groups. “We still believe Julie Swetnick,” tweeted Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

And, let’s face it, the group really had no horse in the race so what cause would they have to do anything but look at the facts objectively. If anything, they should be lauded for not falling into the same trap as NOW, another activist group who, perhaps in a commendable attempt to temper its public voice with as much due diligence as possible, failed to give weight to accusations of claimed sexual assault survivor Juanita Broaddrick.

We need a supercut of all the articles Mr Soave authored breathlessly parroting and speculating on the exact same accusations he now reports were false.

Yes Robby. Due process fucking matters. I would say maybe next time you’ll think before tripping over yourself in a mad rush to “believe the victim” but we all know that’s true. You did it with UVA. You did it here. You’ll do it next time too.

Todd is part of the problem on how media feeds off the frenzy of false accusations. For the most part, on some level, they must know or have known there was a certain amount of bull shit going on. Or else they’re worse journalists than we think so I have to think they *know*.

But there’s value in throwing shit in the media to get attention and possibly help your cause. I don’t think it’s a stretch the mainstream press on the main networks lean (and vote) Democrat and so had an interest in ruining Kavanaugh. This is what makes it so evil. They were willing to ruin his life on information they likely knew to be false.

Mission accomplished. People now think there’s a *rapist” on the Supreme Court because by the time the truth comes out people have moved on and what sticks is what they heard first. “First in, last out’ they call this theory in accounting. In order for them to perhaps changed their minds, the media has to make a stink about the injustice.

Don’t hold your breath.

I don’t think people appreciate just how much it’s good Kavanaugh was confirmed. Had he not, this sort of behaviour and journalism would have been normalized.

“The Kavanaugh fiasco should serve as a strong reminder that the press must cautiously vet accusations, and that legal systems should operate in accordance with principles of fairness and a respect for due process.”

Are we at the point where the progressive left are such jerk offs that we have to remind ourselves of this fact?

Due process is a unique concept that evolved over two thousand years and we arrived at it based on experience and genius.

“Evolved” nothing! It was the Inquisition of all institutions (though not so much the government-directed Spanish one, mind) who pioneered things like preponderance of evidence and presumption of innocence. While that doesn’t exactly absolve the Inquisition of its many excesses, it does say something dreadful about our current institutions that Kavanaugh could have gotten a fairer hearing from the Inquisition than he got from Congress and from media hacks like Robby Soave.

Here was Robby’s take about how Swetnick’s accusation was totes more credible than the Rolling Stone accusations:

“But the Kavanaugh accusations, while not totally solid in every way, are significantly more plausible than the story an anonymous victim, “Jackie,” told to Rolling Stone in 2014.

Because I was an early skeptic of the UVA gang rape, a few people have asked me whether I am similarly skeptical of the Kavanaugh accusations. The journalist Richard Bradley?who expressed doubts about Jackie even before I did?has received the same queries. Like Bradley, I think there are important differences between what the Kavanaugh accusers?Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and now Julie Swetnick?have claimed and what Jackie claimed.”

Just as credible as any of the BK accusers. Who according to Tony downthread, are very credible. So I also accused Tony of raping young boys, as I suddenly remember seeing him do it. But according to Tony’s standard of credibility, I’m legit. So he’s guilty of child rape.

Look, maybe some of the Kavanaugh allegations might not have been 100% truthful. But he was clearly unfit for the Supreme Court even before the #MeToo phase of the confirmation. Let’s recap:

1. Drumpf is an illegitimate President and should not even have gotten to put Gorsuch there. 2. Kennedy’s retirement was suspiciously timed and never fully explained. 3. “Baseball ticket debt” ? what’s he hiding? 4. The snubbed handshake. 5. The white power gestures made by the woman behind him. 6. The fact that he skipped the law school class where you learn Roe v. Wade is a SUPER-PRECEDENT that can never be reversed.

Unfortunately, even with the heroic efforts of Harris, Booker, and Feinstein, the progressive / libertarian alliance failed to stop him. But it’s been incredibly poor taste the way Republicans have “spiked the football” since then.

We cannot say for sure it’s the Russians. But that’s exactly the problem. There could be any number of powerful, shadowy figures he believes he owes a favor. That might impact his rulings on future cases.

“Munri-Leighton’s confession means this accusation should be definitively labeled false.”

Come on, Reason (and Robby), you’re better than this. Munri-Leighton didn’t recant the accusation; she merely admitted that she wasn’t the one who made the accusation. Someone sent an anonymous letter with another accusation against Kavanaugh, and Munri-Leighton sent an e-mail claiming to be the letter writer. Now, she has admitted that ti wasn’t her. That admission has no bearing on whether the original accusation was true or not.

Personally, I don’t give anonymous accusations against public figures a lot of weight, but Munri-Leighton admitting that she didn’t write it doesn’t prove it’s false.

It’s fucking beyond belief–and a credit to Republicans’ utter soullessness–that getting a credibly accused (attempted) drunken rapist on the Supreme Court can be turned around to make the accused and Donald fucking Trump the real victims. Why do people just eat this up? He’s on the goddamn Supreme Court. You won!

You could have nominated someone not credibly accused of being a drunken rapist, but you decided to push this douche through just because you could. So that you didn’t have to show any weakness. Well done. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.

His display in front of the Senate was an embarrassment. Disbelieving his accuser means actively believing in a complex conspiracy theory. It also means implicitly endorsing one tribe over the other, so save the sanctimony.

I don’t know how you would behave if people were falsely accusing you of running a gang rape ring when you were in high school (without any evidence), but I’m pretty sure most sane people would be pretty upset

There was plenty of evidence put on display of an attempted rape. Plenty of evidence of alcohol abuse. Supreme Court nominees have been taken down for far less. The bar is not where it is in a fucking criminal court. At least it shouldn’t be, but Republicans are awful.

The Senate Republicans are obviously pissed and are not letting these accusers get away. I’d suspect that some Senate Democrats are going to be implicated in this affair if Republicans keep their majority in the Senate.

Well, it failed. I say forget all the rape stuff. His Tucker Carlson lizard people ranting was disqualifying to me and it happened right there live on TV. I’m sure he’ll recuse himself in any case involving Democrats.

Accusations without evidence aren’t worth taking seriously. Christine Boozy Ford should be grateful that she managed to sucker a bunch of proglydyte idiots into making her an instant candidate to appear on My Lottery Dream Home where she can get that second rape door installed, instead of being sued into oblivion.

Amd there it is. It doesn’t matter to you that he’s 100% innocent, it’s all about Team Blue getting their way by any means necessary. Which is always the way it is.

A lot of the others here don’t understand how bad you and your kind are Tony, but I do. I know goddamn well it won’t be over until you all leave or die. For your own good, I suggest you start packing now, because when you and your Marxist friends finally push us into a civil war, you will be wiped off the map.

Get out while you can and take as many of your scumbag pals with you as possible.

Watching Tony’s process through that thread was fascinating. And if you can sift through the psychotic bargaining, it actually shows some progress. Tony represents himself as an NPC, but I don’t think he really is. Give him time, but he’s one of the few progressives with an actual chance to survive the nervous breakdown and reform.

I only came here to express sheer admiration at how Republicans can come out the other side of credible accusations of serious wrongdoing, a freight train process with very little actual investigation, and getting everything they wanted, yet with everyone convinced they’re the victims.

I may never understand how they maintain their image as tough shit kickers simultaneously while being whiny little bitches about literally everything.

Tony|11.5.18 @ 3:37PM|# “I only came here to express sheer admiration at how Republicans can come out the other side of credible accusations of serious wrongdoing, a freight train process with very little actual investigation, and getting everything they wanted, yet with everyone convinced they’re the victims.”

And instead you ended up expressing what a pathetic, lying piece of shot you are.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Personally I did not fin the hair over the eye and little girl voice convincing. Also, the inconsistencies, and the shear lack of detail and corroboration. You leftists really do live in an alternate reality.

That is not true. See, this is what I’m talking about. A tweak to facts here, some bullshit doubletalk here, and suddenly the guy who got a seat on the supreme court and the party who got everything they wanted are the real victims here, not the many women Brett has assaulted, attempted to assault, and intimidated in his life. Did you see his behavior? Let’s not put people on the supreme court who are like that. He’s clearly a short-tempered drunk. The worst people.

BTW, you fucking ignoramus, tell us about the Russkis again and how Mueller’s got all sorts of evidence against people who at one time knew Trump and then were caught J-walking. It’s fun to laugh at you.

A tweak to facts here, some bullshit doubletalk here, and suddenly the guy who got a seat on the supreme court and the party who got everything they wanted a bunch of lying wine aunts are the real victims here

This line of thinking has been previously discredited by myself and others.

Ford presented a case that an assault (not a rape) took place at an unknown location on an unknown date. There is no physical evidence and no corroborating witnesses. It is categorically impossible to prove that such an event did not take place.

Argument From Ignorance or Non-Testable Hypothesis

This is the fallacy that that which has not been proven false must or is likely to be true; however, the fallacy usually applies to concepts that haven’t yet been adequately tested or are beyond the realm of proof.

She lied about the second door on her home and its use. She lied about her feelings toward flying. She lied about her therapy. She lied about the polygraph. She lied about the alleged event, as she changed her story multiple times and was contradicted by every other person she said was involved.

If you can’t defeat a prospective supreme court nominee on the issues, but feel the need to slag him on falsified charges of gang rape, you better have some extra-fucking-ordinary evidence for such a claim.

And b’tween you and me… had I had any shred of belief over Ford’s accusations, I’d want to see Swetnick and Michael Avenatti tarred, feathered and thrown in a dark hole for a while.

You had a pair of deuces with Ford, then Avenatti et. al shoved all the chips forward and bluffed that pair of deuces as a straight flush. It’s not our fault your bluff got called and you lost the hand.

Something you believe 100% because you think Republicans should be in charge of the country

Do you really think that way? Her demonstrably changing over time accusation is beyond the realm of proof, and she is currently being abundantly recognized and rewarded for her testimony, but anyone who does not accept her truth at face value is just another Republican shill?

Tony you lying cunt, none of the accusations were ‘credible’. But since you say they are, I accuse you of raping underage boys. I saw you do it. I have no evidence, but I say it is so. Now you need to lose your job and be endlessly investigated by law enforcement until they can prove it.

“Subsequently, Munri-Leighton recanted her charge and admitted she had never met Kavanaugh. “I was angry, and I sent it out,” she said. Munri-Leighton’s confession means this accusation should be definitively labeled false.”

This woman did her damnedest to ruin a guy’s life and also cast doubt on women who have been raped. Drawing and quartering is a bit extreme, but she should not just walk.

BTW: “NBC wasn’t the only media outlet that seems to have relaxed its normal standards during the Kavanaugh hearings. The New Yorker, with exceptionally weak evidence, ran allegations of his sexual misbehavior in college.”

Neither NBC or the New Yorker ‘relaxed standards’ at all. Their constant standards are such as to make them every bit as believable as a post from that lying scumbag turd.

Due process is an archaic bourgeois idea that’s time has to come to be eliminated. All legal decisions should be up to a mob or at bare minimum, someone who knows how to distribute a form of “peoples’ justice.” For too long, innocent people have been released into society only to work hard, contribute to the world, pay taxes, raise families, generate wealth, etc. much to the detriment to our beloved socialist slave state. The Union of Soviet Socialist Slave States has too many people has to many people living in it, and a good way to cull the excess population is through government healthcare, (deny them life giving drugs and surgeries), sending them off to the local gulag (where they can be starved or shot for trying to escape) or denying them the nefarious and ugly idea of due process. The French and the Russians had it right when they correctly killing people at the will of the mob. Therefore, in the best interest of the ruling elitist vermin, due process should be terminated immediately.

They objected to Brett Kavanaugh because of his constitutional theories and judicial record on the circuit court.

When supposedly legal objections failed to work, they decided to blindside him by hitting below the belt last minute.

16 Sep Ford. (Emma Brown’s story in WapO) 23 Sep Ramirez. 26 Sep Swetnick Then the supposed fourth one who told NYT that the 2 Oct Declaration presented by Avenatti was his words not hers and she did not backup Swetnick (and NYT sat on that 3 weeks and did not reveal until 27 Oct LONG after Kavanaugh was approved 6 Oct).

19 Sep Munro-Leighton admitted she filed a false allegation because she was angry and wanted to do somrthing. The Unknown Declarant posted on Twitter by Avenatti on 3 Oct told NBC the next day he twisted and added to her words. Given that Swetnick’s 1 Oct NBC interview did not track with her 26 Sep Declaration probably means Avenatti not only twisted and added to the Unknown Declarant’s words, but may have done the same in Swetnick’s case. Anyone who can read the New Yorker article opening Deborah Ramirez’ claims and the NYT follow-up (she was calling friends hoping they remembered something because she was not sure it was Kavanaugh) and still consider her story “credible” has problems with the definition of “credible”. That leaves Christine Ford with a story that only a Mike Nifong would press charges over.

Let’s take another case where we can test if women ever lie: divorce proceedings. Men will document that almost every angry wife lies to get a better deal during a divorce. They also clearly lie when they are having an affair (you don’t hear “honey I’ll be late tonight, I’m meeting my boyfriend”). Women make up a good portion of check fraud and shoplifting. Women never lie…right.

BK wasn’t entitled to due process because he was never charged with a crime. All the senators could have voted against him even he wasn’t found guilty by court. Conversely, they could have just laughed at the accusers, never invited any of them to testify and held the vote 5 days after the accusation surfaced.

The democrats wanted a de facto criminal investigation by the FBI, even though though no relevant jurisdiction charged BK with any crime. But when his supporters pointed out that lack of evidence should favor the accused, they found it convenient to say “this is a job interview, not a trial”. So basically, they wanted due process to apply only to their side.

The question of fairness (Due process only formally ensures it in a trial) should apply in any scenario. Walmart can technically fire anyone if some random nutjob accuses their employee of rape on FB. If this was regular business practice, the libs would be screaming “corporate greed” or something to that effect from the mountaintops.

The democrats could have met halfway and agreed to move on after a reasonable inquiry discovered no wrongdoing. But they want all YOLO on this issue. The Ford saga is going to be a source of embarrassment for that party for years to come.

I hope they investigate Ford too, and find evidence that bitch was lying. I just felt it in my gut, and from looking at her, and from all the other life facts about her, that it was pure BS. If they could PROVE it was, that would be icing on the cake.

The Rs SHOULD NOT drop this. They should crucify all those assholes, to make an example, and make it harder for the Dems to find future would be liars to come forward.